CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

 

Oliver peered into the vision well. It seemed to go down a very long way. It was pitch-black and he could not even see the water at the bottom.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Esther asked, peering from the gloomy hole back to him.

He nodded. He was certain. “It’s the only way to save the school.”

Esther reached out and rubbed his arm tenderly. “We’ll be here waiting for you.”

Oliver stepped up onto the brick wall surrounding the well. He paused for a moment to steady his nerves. Then he jumped.

Immediately, Oliver was plunged into the pitch-black darkness. His hair swooshed all over the place as wind roared in his ears. He was falling very quickly, quick enough to make his stomach turn. His heart beat a mile a minute.

Then he hit the ice-cold water.

Oliver was expecting to stop there. But he did not. He kept falling, beneath the surface and downward, plunging ever further into the depths.

Oliver’s heart rate quickened even more. The water was in his ears, his nose. He felt like he was choking on it. He tried to remain calm, to force his mind to accept that this was just a vision and not reality. That, just like his seer test in Professor Amethyst’s office, it was a highly realistic hallucination. But that didn’t stop his hands from trembling. The thought of drowning was terrifying.

Even more disconcerting was the fact he could see absolutely nothing. It took every ounce of Oliver’s bravery not to panic.

This is a vision, he reminded himself.

Finally, he felt his feet hit the bottom of the well. He stopped sinking and came to a gentle halt. He glanced about but there was nothing to see. The blackness was impenetrable.

Then, suddenly, a blindingly bright light flashed on. Oliver turned his face, covering his eyes with his arm. The light was so bright it hurt. Tears sprang into his eyes.

Once he’d blinked the dots from his eyes, he turned back. And there it was. The Orb of Kandra.

Oliver immediately felt the tug in his heart that he’d felt the first time he’d laid eyes upon an orb. It was his primal instinct as a seer to protect it at all costs.

He reached for it, but found his fingers went straight through. The orb was not real. Of course not. But Oliver still felt bitter disappointment that he couldn’t cradle it safely in his hands.

Forcing away every instinct in his body, Oliver watched the scene unfold.

The Orb of Kandra floated in the blackness. It looked just like an infant universe, the ones that floated through the sixth dimension.

Then other lights appeared around the well. Tiny galaxies. Oliver realized he was watching the formation of the Milky Way. This Milky Way. And right at its center was the Orb of Kandra, as important to this dimension as the sun was to the earth.

Oliver watched on, breathless with awe, as the scene around the Orb transformed.

It now showed him the Orb of Kandra in her special place in Professor Amethyst’s office, resting on the plinth in the sixth dimension. Seeing her in her rightful position made Oliver’s heart soar with gladness.

He watched as the school formed around the Orb, a process that he realized now had not been chosen or designed, but had happened spontaneously. The school existed around the Orb. For the Orb. Not the other way around. They could not exist without one another. They were one and the same.

That’s when it happened. Oliver saw with terrifying clarity the moment the Obsidians stormed the school. They had not come from a breach in the walls, as Lucas’s rogues had, nor from a hole blasted into the dimensional wall like Lucas’s bomb had been intending to create. The Obsidians gained entrance directly into the sixth dimension using an Obsidian knife.

Oliver gasped. He’d known Ralph’s weapon was dangerous but seeing it in action was quite another thing. His heart called out in pain as he watched the very fabric of reality being slowly sliced open. It was wrong. So very wrong. The weapon was extremely dark and powerful, he realized now, and Ralph had been right to refuse to use it back in the pub. No wonder Professor Amethyst usually kept it under lock and key. The weapon had far too much power. In the wrong hands it could be used for evil means.

He watched on now as the cleave between the fabric of dimensions was ripped open more and more to allow the Obsidians to seep inside. It was like watching termites crawling out their hill. Oliver tasted bile in his throat.

The students worked in perfect harmony. It took three of them working with delicate precision to even remove the Orb from its plinth. The second they did, the sixth dimension began to shake.

Oliver, too, felt the ground shaking beneath him. It was a horrible feeling, one that caused a deep ache in his chest, for he knew that this was what his friends and teachers must be feeling at the School for Seers right now. He wanted nothing more than to stop them right there and then. But it was just a vision. He had no power.

The students only touched the Orb for one second at a time, passing it along the chain quickly like it could burn their flesh if they held it for too long. Then it was passed through the slice in the dimensional fabric. The students scurried after it, disappearing back through the gap as quickly as they’d come through.

Oliver watched on, hopelessly, as the gap was closed and the light from the Orb suffocated. It left nothing behind but the shaking ground. It was the loneliest, scariest feeling in the world.

Suddenly, the scene changed. Oliver was looking down at a dark building, like a Gothic castle. Inside, a group of Obsidians were celebrating. A terrifying-looking woman in a long black cape seemed to be leading the whole procession. And there, in a golden cage, the Orb of Kandra was chained down. As if it were a sentient being, the Orb thrashed in its chains, ricocheting off the sides of its magical prison. Its movements seemed to delight the woman, who watched it while laughing with maniacal glee.

Then he watched as the woman pulled out her Obsidian knife. Knowing now the truth of its power, Oliver felt himself tremble at the mere sight of it.

The woman raised her arm, holding the knife high above her head. Then she brought it down in one crashing motion, piercing right into the heart of the Orb.

A sound like none Oliver had ever heard before filled his ears. It was like an agonizing scream, a thunder clap, a crashing wave, a runaway train, nails on a chalkboard, all the worst noises at once. He knew right away it was the sound of the Orb of Kandra dying. He felt his heart break.

The shaking began immediately. He forced his eyes open, even though his vision was now swimming with tears, to watch the rest of the horrifying scene.

The woman was holding the dead Orb in her hands. It was no longer glowing white, but black like a lump of coal. But her expression was no longer gleeful. Oliver realized then that the shaking was happening to her too. It was evident that something she had not envisaged was taking place, that destroying the Orb had had some kind of profound effect on her own reality she’d not been anticipating.

Then everything began collapsing in on itself. In a swirling vortex, everything began to circle around the lump of dead Orb in her hand. Oliver gasped as he realized what he was looking at. The Orb had turned into a black hole and was sucking everything into it.

He watched, horrified, as everything collapsed and fell into the vacuum of the black hole. Then the final point of light disappeared and everything was black.

She had destroyed everything. Not just the School for Seers and the dimension it sat in, but her own school, her own dimension.

Suddenly it all made sense in Oliver’s mind. The woman hadn’t known it when she killed the Orb that she’d be destroying herself too. It had been mutually assured destruction. The schools could not exist without one another. The Obsidians were the shadows to Amethyst’s light. The evil to their good. They balanced one another. Neither could exist without the other.

Suddenly, the scene before Oliver flickered like an old movie reel. The school appeared again. There was the woman with the Obsidian knife. The Orb was caged before her.

Oliver realized this must be a different timeline. The same event from another parallel dimension.

“Let us hide the Orb,” the woman announced. “Somewhere they’ll never think to look.”

Clearly, she’d learned her lesson about the schools needing one another to exist. This time, she was going to hide the Orb instead of destroying it.

He watched as she used the knife to create a slice in the fabric of time. Then she slid the Orb inside, like it was in a small pocket within dimensions.

Before Oliver had a chance to work out where that may be, he was suddenly surrounded by a rainbow of light. Immediately, he recalled Newton’s laboratory and the spinning prism that split light into its rainbow components. Why was the vision well showing him this?

As he glanced about him at the rays of light, a sudden strange golden tree began to grow up from the ground.

Something clicked in Oliver’s mind. He remembered the alchemy experiments Newton had been conducting, the recipe he’d been working on that turned metal into a structure that resembled the branches of a tree.

Was this the same thing? Newton’s experiments had yielded only very small quantities. This tree was fully grown and growing by the second.

Oliver staggered back as the tree grew taller and taller. Soon, its branches were thick and strong, bursting through the very bricks around him. The room started to shudder.

Oliver tried not to succumb to his fear, reminding himself it was just a vision. But watching the bricks of the well fall and splash into the dark water all around him was scary.

Suddenly, a bright white light appeared at the top of the well. Oliver felt his heart tug toward it. He knew, right away, that it was the Orb of Kandra.

Then it began to fall, bouncing from one branch to the next.

As it softly fell toward him, Oliver stared at it, his heart soaring. But he had to remind himself this wasn’t real. This was just a vision. The real Orb was still hidden somewhere. And he still had to decipher what the vision well was trying to tell him.

Suddenly, the Orb of Kandra fell from the last branch and bopped Oliver on the head. As it did, the answer came to him in a sudden burst of inspiration.

Newton’s alchemist tree had the power to break through the Orb of Kandra’s invisible prison walls! Wherever the woman had hidden it, whatever dimension it had been tucked away in, Newton’s tree would grow toward it and free it from it prison!

No sooner had Oliver thought it, than the well began to bubble. The water beneath him began to surge, pushing him upward. Then, in a huge wave, it pushed him over the edges of the well.

He flopped at the feet of his friends. He was surprised to discover he was bone dry.

They all peered down at him: Esther, Ralph, Michael, and Samuel.

“Oliver!” Esther cried. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. He was a little shaken from the whole experience, and very wet, but overall he was filled with motivation and a sudden sense of clarity.

“I know how to find the Orb of Kandra,” he told them.

“How?” Esther asked.

“We’ll need Newton’s help.”

Esther looked exasperated.

“Newton? You mean the person we left to come here?” She looked frustrated. Exhausted. Oliver couldn’t blame her. It was a frustrating situation to be in.

“Don’t worry. This won’t fail. The well showed me exactly what to do.”

“Then let’s waste no time,” Ralph said, standing. “It’s a long way back to Newton’s house from here.”

“You can tell us what you saw on the way,” Michael added.

Everyone ran through the corridors, heading for the exit of the school. Then they burst out into the now black evening.

Oliver shivered as they wove their way through the hidden streets toward the city of London.

But just as they turned the corner, they bumped right into someone standing at the entrance to the alleyway. And when the figure turned, everyone gasped with shock.

Standing before them was Isaac Newton.